A trip to Rome stirred memories of love, loss and a chance encounter. Annabelle Thorpe’s novel What Lies Within (Quercus, £8.99) is out now.

“Yes, Dad.” Sarah stooped to help him out of the taxi. “Thirty years. So long. How come you and Mum never came back?”

“You know what she was like.”

The grief in his smile made her chest tighten.

Such a whirlwind. Always on to the next thing. Never look back, that’s what she used to say.” He sighed, heavily. “I don’t seem to do much else, of late.”

Sarah pressed her lips together – she had promised herself not to cry in front of him while they were away.

Three whole days – how long was it since she and her father had spent so much time alone together?

And yet she’d known, as soon as he began talking about Rome, about revisiting the streets where they had first met and fallen in love, that she would go with him.

She watched the taxi head back over the bridge. They were in an avenue of plane trees above the river Tiber.

Sarah slipped her arm through her father’s and guided him across the road. “Tell me again how you and Mum met.”

“You’ve heard that story a million times.”

“I can always hear it again.”

“She was just standing outside my front door: 32 Calle Borgino. Clutching a map, obviously lost. Trying to find the Campo Fiore. I offered to walk her and we began to talk but she was so beautiful, so bewitching, that I paid no attention to where we were going and before long we were lost. We ended up in a run-down square, with a hole-in-the-wall café. Richello’s. I’ve still got the card somewhere. I didn’t want to tell her I was lost, so I asked if she’d like coffee and cannoli. We sat for hours. Coffee became wine, and then dinner.”

“The perfect evening.”

“It was. Yet we never found that café again.”

Sarah smiled.

The story was so familiar, yet there was an unbearable poignancy to it now.

She glanced up as the street grew narrower; the buildings on either side a rich palette of burnt auburn and saffron.

The city was changing; the grandeur of the old town melting into a quieter, more residential feel, with simple trattorias spilling tables on to the streets.

It still seemed possible that her mum would appear at any moment, stepping out of one of the restaurants.

“Here we are.” She glanced up at the sign: Calle Borgino. John peered along the street.

“But this can’t be it. There used to be a bar on this corner, D’Ella Vina. Always kept a good Montepulciano. Your mother’s favourite.”

“It’s been 30 years, Dad. Things will have changed.”

“I know.” He shook his head as they began to walk. “What is that?”

Sarah followed his gaze towards a glass-fronted building.

The window framed a twisted mass of metal and rubber, shaped to look vaguely like a tree.